I read this book because it's currently the On the Same Page selection for the Cincinnati Public Library. The premise was intriguing, but the story never really gelled for me. Lots of little side storylines that didn't add much to the story and too many characters I didn't care all that much about took away from the story, imo. ( )

There were times this book dragged but I really very interesting story. ( )

Remember those old war films that focused on a small group of ethnically-diverse G.I.s or doughboys? There was a naive WASP, usually the officer, another WASP, son of privilege, a street-wise thug with a heart of gold, usually Irish or Italian, a Jew, and a Negro. Whether real units were always so balanced is another matter, but the situation gave ample room for playing the characters off one another during their common ordeal. April Smith’s book, A Gold Star for Mrs. Blake, is about their moms.
The story is about a quest, but for the sons of these mothers, theirs ends in the underworld. It is up to the remarkable women Smith depicts to complete the journey by following their lost boys to hell, in the form of a pilgrimage to the battlefields on which they fell and the immaculate cemetery created to inter their smashed remains. The mothers depart with mixed feelings of patriotic pride and mournful yearning. As in any quest, they pass through ordeals, make discoveries, and even recover surprising treasures. And all who make the trek have their lives unalterably changed.
For April Smith, this book represents a departure after a series of crime novels set in the present with a kick-ass FBI agent, Ana Gray, as their protagonist. When I first heard of it, I suspected an act of bandwagon-jumping, given the recent success of historical novels. But it turns out this book germinated for a quarter of a century, starting with access given to Smith to the diary of one involved in the Gold Star program.
That program—the offer to transport mothers who lost sons in World War I to visit their final resting place in France—had been unknown to me before coming to this this book. That, and a superbly-constructed plot, made me glad to have read it, a good read. ( )

This was a story about a group of Gold Star Mothers in 1931. The U.S. government hosted trips for the mothers and widows who had lost their sons and husbands in WWI. The inspiration for the story came from the diary of one of the liaison officers who escorted groups of women to Europe. Very good reading. ( )

Congress enacted legislation in 1929 that authorized the Secretary of War to arrange pilgrimages for the wives and mothers who had lost a husband or son in the war and whose remains were interred in a cemetery in Europe. This historical fiction novel tells the story of a group of Gold Star Mothers who, in 1931, courtesy of this legislation traveled to France to visit the grave sites of their sons who were killed in World War I.

The mothers we meet in the story are from various backgrounds making them very unlike one another but they came together as a group because each mother had lost a son in the war. The group members were Cora Blake, a librarian from Maine; Katie, an Irish Catholic maid from Massachusetts; Minnie, a Russian immigrant and wife of a Jewish chicken farmer; Bobbie, a wealthy socialite from Boston; and Wilhelmina, a former tennis player who suffered from a mental condition. This group traveled together with an army escort and an army nurse. As they went through the journey they learned much about themselves and each other. Through this trip they were able to make a proper farewell to their soldier sons and they learned to accept and appreciate their own diversity. The plot also provided the reader with a few surprises, including a death and a secret revealed.

I was not aware of the Gold Star Mother pilgrimages before I read this book so I found that historical piece to be very interesting. However, I found the story itself and the characters to be somewhat laborious.

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